It’s getting ugly in Nevada, as reporters at the state’s Republican caucuses are spotting irregularities, disorganization and open violations of caucus rules.
The state GOP claims there have been “no official reports of voting irregularities or violations,” but anecdotal scenes of chaos seem to contradict that message…
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Well Trump won with about 42 percent of the vote according to the NY Times.
Rubio and Cruz were a distant second and third with 25 to 20 percent of the votes.
This does not convince me that if either of them dropped out, Trump would be toast to the survivor. I imagine that a good deal of Cruz voters could go to Trump. I have no idea about the average Rubio voter to make this determination but some of them would go to Trump as well.
Yet I imagine people are still going to call people who worry about a Trump nomination, Chicken Little.Report
Not me!
Polling on two-person races are still not favorable to Trump, he’s going to net fewer than ten delegates here (assuming the results are certified), and Nevada is one of the Trumpiest states on the map. But there is nothing here to force Cruz out, plus Trump may actually get some momentum, the press is moving, plus the map is more favorable to him with a split vote in the south and then more WTA in the north where Trump has more support.
It’s not over, but it’s moving in that direction at a rapid clip and by next week may require the Trump University thing to somehow do what nothing else could.Report
It’s going to be Trump. Cruz is in it for the duration of the race because he’s a sumbitch. Carson because his whole campaign is a shady fundraising scheme.
Kasich will be out eventually, but barring a Veep promise from Rubio in the next week, it won’t be soon enough. And I’m not sure Kasich would take that Veep promise, since he knows Rubio won’t win a four-man race.Report
Carson, though, is spending a lot more money than he’s taking in. At some point the leeches will determine there’s no more blood to suck and he’ll be done.Report
Yeah, I’m not sure how much longer Carson is going to be able to hang out.
That cuts both ways, though, because I think he has more Trumpies than Kasich does and maybe more Trumpies than Rubions.Report
If I had to lay money on the matter I’d expect the majority of his supporters go to Cruz, but despite that the establishment needs him out if for no other reason than to clarify the race further and let them figure out just how deep in they are.Report
He’s clearly an amateur at this. He really needs to look to Santorum for a good example of how to earn enough money “running a campaign” to sustain yourself until the next election.Report
Nevada is the next thing to a home state for Trump and a very odd caucus to boot. As I previously said, check in after Super Tuesday when we see how Trump fares in a narrowed field in multiple states he has had scarce time to focus on and we’ll see.Report
Has he really focused on any state? Rubio actually lived and has connections in Nevada.Report
That he didn’t beat Trump is not a surprise, but he should have been able to put more distance between himself and Cruz because of what you say and the Mormon vote/connection.
Seems to be concentrating on Minnesota, Arkansas, and Tennessee. He should be able to win one of those (maybe Georgia or Virginia as well). The expectations game won’t get him very far if he’s shut out again.Report
Yeah, if he can’t chalk up a lot of wins then he’s going to have a serious problem.Report
The conventional wisdom used to be that states with crazy-ass caucus procedures would work *against* Donald, as one needs organization and a disciplined following to win those.Report
Indeed, Trump has definitely defied expectations all around, certainly including mine. I remain unconvinced that he has a path to the nomination (for one thing neither Hillary, Liberals, the Democrats or I are that lucky) but my certainty is wavering. We’ll see what happens on super Tuesday.Report
https://twitter.com/thehill/status/702517605442134016Report
Maybe it’s my twitter illiteracy but is there something there? Like an argument for how/why the delegate math looks grim for his opponents? I grant, however, that if Trump pulls 48% in the other contests then yes all the math goes for him.Report
Did you click thru… sgot math and experts and suchlike fersureReport
Interesting article… but isn’t the math pretty simple: if he wins all the upcoming primaries he probably wins?
I might have overlooked the nuance, but he didn’t seem to be handicapping/discounting actual delegate allocation… just assuming Trump wins and gets all the profit? Like, all the Hybrid states seem to show him getting 100% of the delegates? Sure, he did it in South Carolina, but repeating that model for every Hybrid state seems a little off. Certainly a case for plausibility, but not sufficiently mathed for predictive purposes – at least in my reading.
But, I will go out on a limb and also declare that if Trump wins all or nearly all the primaries, he will amass, eventually, the 1237 delegates needed to secure the nomination.Report
The expert makes certain assumptions about the impossibility or near-impossibility of the climb assuming that Trump’s current polling in states through 15 March holds more or less steady, moving into WTA part of the schedule. So, there’s definitely a “nothing succeeds like success” flavor to it. In other words, for those hoping that the mere possession of solid pluralities would not be adequate to produce delegate majorities, in fact overwhelming delegate majorities, the system was designed self-consciously produce exactly that: Unless Cruz or Rubio or Zombie Reagan begin defeating Trump in single combat, the system is tailor-made to hand the convention and with it the party structure to someone who never won anything close to majority support from voters.
I will now violate Godwin’s Famous Law here by saying that, if someone was of a mind to do so, he or she could violate Godwin’s Famous Law here to draw certain unwelcome comparisons.Report
Got it… the plausibility of 35% to the nomination.
Assuming nothing changes.Report
Okay I think I figures it out. It’s not a bad article, it really is based on a lot of old polling. I would like to see some newer tea leaf readings with the narrowed field and Trump being taken more seriously. What I get from the Hill was basically “if he polls like he used to in the divided field and wins a lot Trump will win” and I’m like well sure.Report
@north
I’d be careful what you wished for.
In a race between someone who people generally assume is very serious but who rubs most people the wrong way, and someone people aren’t so sure is serious but whom people generally seem to like quite a bit, I am not so sure there is a slam dunk victor.Report
It is true, my Tod, that more tears are shed in this world over wishes granted than not granted. That said, in the horrible event of a GOP president, I’m unconvinced Trump would be worse than any of those other jokers that’re running (from a liberal perspective).Report
There we are agreed.Report
{{Can you even imagine the wailing, gnashing and rending from Clintonistas if Hillary loses to Trump? Egads. I hate to even think about it.}}Report
Hey, slow down there! One Armageddon at a time! Let’s see if we can get her to win a primary first.Report
I’d definitely be one of them.Report
That was a nugget of hope that I had going in. It appears the rules may not have been uniformly observed. Even granting that, though, that he matched the polls in a closed-caucus state makes me less optimistic about future caucus states. They might not be as chaotic, but they may not need to be.Report
Ultimately the rules and a grasp of them matters primarily in close races. If your faction at the caucus is pronouncedly larger than those of your competitors a nuanced grasp of the rules will just fiddle with the margins. A large enough wave will simply swamp even the most intricate system of dikes and canals.Report
“not following the rules” should be the scariest thing for persons who would like to see a robust Republican party (for whatever reason) and dislike Trump.
The whole point, the entire definition, of being an ‘establishment’ is having your fingers on the buttons that control the subtle, mostly invisible machinery that form the foundation the highly visible centers of power. Now, it’s entirely possible for the ‘establishment’ to lose the visible power center in a fair fight, even lose it in a unfair fight that they’ve tried to shape their way.
But to lose control of the machinery itself, how does that happen? The people that tend to work the nuts and bolts of political election processes are almost invariably people that have been active for a long time, and nobody else really wants the job. (the same sort of people that show up for local government council meetings when there’s nothing earth shattering on the docket)
So either those people have gone over for Trump, which is sort of amazing, or Trump has enough of a fanbase for people to not only show up to vote, but also volunteer to be part of the nuts and bolts procedures – which is even more amazing.Report
You know, if Trump wins the nomination, I’m expecting several mea cupa’s from several posters/writers on this site.
If he wins the presidency, I expect fainting spells. After speaking to several folks in the office, we all have agreed that we are enjoying Trumps run for the only reason that it’s causing liberals, dems, and the left, and the rest of the Repubs to pull their hair out.Report
We can’t have utopia on this here earth, but we can have lulztopia.Report
Yes. In other news, Bernie’s campaign is currently infested by people in it for da lulz.Report
If he wins the presidency, I want a border wall.Report
I wanted a wall BEFORE he ran for office 🙂Report
Are you Canadian too?Report
No, but we can’t let in those sketchy Canadians into the US either!Report
For the first time since 2008, our head of government is prettier and more liberal than yours. We don’t want to go to the States. 😀Report
Tell that to all the people who left the great white north to work in the arts in LA.Report
Or the Canadians that come here for health care.Report
I wanted a wall on the Mex boarder but the Dems wont agree since they seem bent on letting as many illegals in as possible.Report
Yeah, well, you’re the one eating human meat, ain’t you?
Cheers to the fucking free market!Report
Half of illegal immigrants came through an airport or were inspected border crossing.Report
You’ll get no mea culpas if he wins the nomination from me.
I will hold myself minorly personally responsible if he does win the Presidency. It’s always useful to have a President who owes you a favor or two, isn’t it?Report
If Trump wins the nomination after I get done being ecstatically blackout drunk I’ll post a very emphatic mea culpa.Report
Ehh. No one can blame you for believing Trump wouldn’t win. You were just one of the few (or only?) who has consistently maintained that view as reports of his impending demise, ranging over dozens of iterations, proved to be inaccurate.
The only people who get to call for apologies or gloat over a Trump win would be folks who predicted, way back when, that Trump would win. Which is no one, as far as I’m aware.Report
Not even the people strategically helping his campaign.
Not even the smart betting contingent (which means they’ve got better polls than the rest of the lot, because money is riding on it).Report
I think the only prediction I made was that Hillary and Jeb! would go through their respective primaries with relative ease, and Hillary would defeat Jeb! in the general but with quite short coattails. I was wrong on both parties’ primaries. I’m still picking the Dem (whichever) over the Republican in the general with short coattails.
Predicting which election cycle the peasants will break out the pitchforks and torches is hard.Report
If Hillary beats Trump, her coattails will be quite long.Report
I’m not comfy predicting that. Hillary is not a charismatic politician and in theory the GOP could adopt a strategy that unlinks their downticket races from Trump which could limit a coattail effect.Report
Crystal ball is cloudy, but that being said… if Trump does as poorly as I imagine he will, it’ll be a disaster downticket. Not just talking about losing the Senate. The House could be in play.
Reasons being:
(1) Poll numbers likely to be discouraging.
(2) A lot of Republicans will stay home. Not just because of the poll numbers, but because they don’t want to vote for their nominee.
(3) The “new voters” Trump might bring to the table won’t be Republicans, and are most likely to punch the Trump chad and go home.
So it’s the worst of multiple worlds. Worse, I believe, than a Cruz nomination that yielded the same lopsided result.Report
From your lips to God(ess?)’s ears.Report
I agree with all of this and would add:
(4) Trump will mobilize Democratic voters. He will do to Hispanic turnout what Obama did for AA turnout, but for the other party.Report
I don’t know.
I suppose it all depends on Trump, I guess. I’ve begun suspecting that he’s not only going to win the nomination, he’s going to win the election.
If he makes a big point of how it’s important for all of his voters to vote a straight ticket…
I don’t know.Report
Trump can’t win the general. Don’t confuse an exploit of first past the post voting in a party that still has significant power vacuums from the collapse of the Bush’s administration’s mandate from heaven, with a proper populist movement.Report
Your confidence reminds me of the confidence I had a few months ago.Report
Here’s a horrifying scenario: Clinton (who almost certainly wins the Democratic nomination), who is already not particularly popular even within her own party (see, e.g., the last two Democratic presidential primaries in which she has entered as the prohibitive favorite, but then…), and already facing scandal (however trumped up, pardon the pun), suddenly faces another, this time overwhelming scandal. She becomes virtually unelectable, and Trump is pretty much gifted the presidency.
Granted, as I’ve said before, I think a Cruz presidency would be a much greater disaster than a Trump presidency, but if he has the nomination, he’s a scandal or two away from the presidency regardless of his own “electability.”Report
Well, the one solid prediction I’ve gone on record making regarding the GOP is that Cruz won’t get the nom. But I agree that he’d be the bigger disaster. Prolly the biggest of all conceivable disasters, actually.Report
Is this where I point out that Clinton still has sky high favorability ratings among Democrat’s and if any of the caucuses or primaries were closed to only Democrat’s who were registered before the last few months ago, she would’ve won in romps in Iowa and Nevada and likely been really close in NH?Report
Your premise is not factually supported by polls of Democratic voters. Both Sanders and Clinton generate similar favorability levels and enthusiasm levels. There have been many polls showing this.
“Clinton unpopular with Democrats” (while somehow winning the primary) is one of those “factesque” things. Everyone knows it’s true, despite being false.Report
Yeah, more predictions of his impending demise. By now, that’s a very familiar theme.Report
Emphatically yes.Report
I think that’s overstating the case at the moment… we don’t really know how he’ll perform as the field narrows.
Curiously, he’s polling very well in MA, which way back when was a firewall to all the crazy right-wing republicans… Will (not to call him out) was very persuasive that the Blue state republicans really are the check to pure Redstate madness.
Trump is polling between 32%-50% as of two days ago… and one thing we can say at this time is that the polling is not phantom polling; the people who say they will vote for him show up to vote.
Which is just a long way to say, I don’t know what to say…Report
These are birth pangs.Report
That’s what I hear.Report
The premise that New England and other blue state Republicans is one that needs to be examined more closely. Yeah, Hogan of Maryland is pretty mellow, but look at LePage from Maine.
The reason why a lot of blue states are the way they are is the relatively recent defection of large number of white collar professionals from the Republicans to the Democrats – people, that in a previous generation were the base of power for Republican politicians in affluent large metro suburbs.
It seems to me that a lot of blue state Republican party members are increasingly inhabiting sour boroughs – anyone wanting real power works within the Dems, leaving the GOP apparatus to the nutters.
Who also seems to me are primed for a Trump takeover.Report
Yup, there’s two kinds of Republican’s in blue states
They either focus relentless on fiscal issues while largely ignoring social issues and get to win when the DNC in the state screws up – see Maryland, New Jersey, Washington, Massachusetts, etc.
Or they go completely off the deep end and screw themselves over – see California and Oregon.
Maine’s a weird thing because there’s a left leaning Independent party that screws over the DNC at times.Report
The Blue State Firewall was built on a faulty premise that was later revealed. At the time it was being formulated, the assumption was that Trump’s support was coming from The Base. I mean, they hated the establishment so they had to be the base, right?
What more gradually came to be revealed, however, was that a bigger portion of his support was coming from “moderates.” I put the word in quotes because what we define as moderate is not that their views are center, but that they are a hodgepodge of views that go right and left and even one another out.
That… actually describes a lot of northern Republicans (and independents) pretty well. Which leaves us in a position that it is the more conservative states where Trump is more likely to have difficulty because they are more likely to have problems with his heterodox postures.Report
Yeah, revealing is the watch-word for this entire cycle.
I mentioned your previous comments precisely because absent the revelations they seemed so plausible…
MBD and Douthat have interesting columns on what to to with what has been revealed.
Here, I’m noticing that we’re moving from trying to understand the implications of a Trump to rallying for the General election… and thereby painting Trump with all the usual colors.Report
The only predictions I made were Hillary and that Rubio would be a real player in the race (I didn’t predict a GOP winner since my view going in was that the GOP is too crazy to call.) Rubes is really letting me down. So is Hillary, but that sorta goes without saying.Report
Trump’s chances depend a lot on what happens on Super Tuesday (and Significant Saturday, as I’m dubbing Mar. 5). If Cruz wins more delegates than Rubio, and/or wins Texas, he’ll be sticking around for a while. In that case, it’s more likely that we’ll see either a Trump victory or a brokered convention.
The outcome I want is for Trump to lose the Republican primary, but do well enough that losing will offend his ego (especially if he loses at a brokered convention) so he’ll mount a third-party run, thereby throwing the election to the Democrats.Report
Trump did well with Latino and Women voters in Nevada:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/02/23/nevada_caucus_results_live_blog.html
He also did very well with poorly educated voters:
“We won the evangelicals. We won with young. We won with old. We won with highly educated. We won with poorly educated. I love the poorly educated. We’re the smartest people, we’re the most loyal people. You know what I really am happy about, because I’ve been saying it for a long time, 46 percent with the Hispanics, 46 percent, No. 1 with hispanics. I’m really happy about that.”
I have a feeling that Trump’s gaudy vulgarity is a big selling point.Report
Trump did very well among Latinos (and women) (and Latina women) *that didn’t show up to the Dem caucus last weekend*. Heck, with what a cluster fish the caucus was probably many that did caucus last weekend, too.
(nb: it doesn’t matter how ‘fair’ a caucus is, they are an intraparty process that can use completely arbitrary procedures at any point. )Report
Agree on the parenthetical.Report
I was tempted to say that Republicans had finally found real examples of voter fraud, but that seemed like a “kicking them while they’re down” sort of thing to do.Report
To be blunt, if you’re a Latino who still votes Republican at this point, you’re family has probably been here a long time (in some cases, longer than the Anglos!) and don’t have that great a connection to the new undocumenteds showing up.Report
About the only thing I am seeing so far is just how much the level of hate is in the country, and my only predicition is that the level of hate is only going up between now and Nov. Both Hilary and Trump have unfavorable ratings over 50%, and while Trumps are worse than hers the way he’s been blowing out every prediction made by the chattering classes I am not sure if that is going to hold. I believe that @jaybird was wondering what his ceiling was, what her floor was. I think that is the way to go on this, with the result no coat tails for either.Report
This is interesting though…
I mean, still early days, but…Report